Comments on: The Probabilistic Age http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/12/19/the-probabilistic-age/ The place for me to turn abstract stuff into concrete (!). Mon, 16 May 2011 13:06:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Thomas Drakengren http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/12/19/the-probabilistic-age/#comment-12 Sun, 25 Dec 2005 21:22:16 +0000 http://conceptualintegrity.wordpress.com/2005/12/19/the-probabilistic-age/#comment-12 If we are to discuss the best way to organize a state, that’s indeed a completely different discussion! ;-) The abstract concept of “controlling a system”, not involving values of any kind, is difficult enough, I think!
I’m quite convinced that the values of Western states are quite different from Chinese values. And perhaps we should be happy that the Western rulers traditionally have been bad managers; otherwise democracy might never have turned up…

]]> By: Pontus Gagge http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/12/19/the-probabilistic-age/#comment-11 Sat, 24 Dec 2005 00:03:39 +0000 http://conceptualintegrity.wordpress.com/2005/12/19/the-probabilistic-age/#comment-11 Nice story. Wonderful to see that the concept of the inscrutable wisdom of the Orient still is alive and well. I’m rather more interested in what the current dissemination of such superficially heart-warming fables tells us about how the current set of Chinese rulers really think about openness and democracy. Putting the genie back into the bottle without either losing the admittedly impressive economic gains or fragmenting their ethnically, linguistically, and, yes, culturally heterogenous expanse would challenge K’ung Fu Tzu himself.

Really. Put *any* Western ruler in the place of the purported emperor and watch the *believability* of such foresightedness plummet. Granted, my own ancestors were busy whacking reindeer in the head at the period in question, but Chinese or Germanic, then or today, were and are all human, all too human.

]]> By: Thomas Drakengren http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/12/19/the-probabilistic-age/#comment-10 Mon, 19 Dec 2005 15:14:05 +0000 http://conceptualintegrity.wordpress.com/2005/12/19/the-probabilistic-age/#comment-10 Hm, that’s very interesting indeed! Now let’s watch how well Google fares in the China market…

]]> By: Martin Börjesson http://blog.drakengren.com/2005/12/19/the-probabilistic-age/#comment-9 Mon, 19 Dec 2005 15:01:20 +0000 http://conceptualintegrity.wordpress.com/2005/12/19/the-probabilistic-age/#comment-9 I wonder if not the Chinese government already have this included in their perspective…? Maybe they rule long term exactly by taking these mechanisms into consideration. Most of us cannot grasp their long perspective or why they are so afraid of certain things. We in the west on the other hand have this handicap Chris Anderson is talking and have consequently been struggling with “bad” systems of managing ourselves for hundreds of years.

One of my students who wrote his thesis in China told me about a story on Chinese way of manageing free thinking. Some decades before the birth of Confucius the Chinese emperor foresaw a huge structural problem in China’s future. Because of the need for innnovation and new thoughts to meet this future the free thinking was let loose. An era of free thinking flourished (at the same time as in Greece) After Confucius, the task was completed and his thoughts was integrated into the governmental system, and the free thinking was again closed down and China continued on this new track.

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